Nuclear Neurosis

WOW! It's certainly been a while....I've been enjoying the sabbatical from political life, expunged from the human drama, though never the spectacle. However, there are times when one simply must contribute to the (un)usual drivel.

Today an article from the Saskatoon StarPhoenix, hidden away on a side column of page A13 no less, gives brief summary of a new draft resolution against Iran's nuclear program going up for debate by the UN security council. The article reads:

Ban Iranians from studying nuclear physics, draft says
Washington. The United States and three European allies have given Russia and China a draft text
for a Security Council resolution against Iran's nuclear program. The proposal
includes the extraordinary step of preventing Iranian students from studying
nuclear physics at foreign universities and colleges. The draft resolution also
would prohibit any technical or financial assistance that could benefit Iran's
nuclear program, and would impose a visa ban on any Iranians involved in nuclear
activities. UN ambassadors from six countries - the five permanent members of
the Security Council and Germany - are scheduled to meet today to debate the
resolution, officials said. NYT

Basically then, it appears the UN Security Council is actually trying to limit the study of a particular subject by people of a particular nationality... So what's my big problem? After all, we're supposed to do our part to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons right? That's exactly the problem - the study of nuclear physics is not the creation of nuclear weapons! It is only the global propaganda mechanism instigated by Bush Co. which links these two ideas directly, with the 'axis' as the country of Iran - or apparently the country's scholars and scientists. If nuclear physics is not the creation of nuclear bombs then what is it? According to Wikipedia's page on nuclear physics:

"Nuclear physics is the branch of physics concerned with the nucleus of the
atom. It has three main aspects: probing the fundamental particles (proton and
neutrons) and their interactions, classifying and interpreting the properties of
nuclei, and providing technological advances".

Notice the words 'weapon' and 'bomb' are absent from the above? Perhaps 'technological advances' should be further examined in order to establish just what so called 'advances' have come from the study of nuclear physics. Wikipedia's article concludes that:

"Experiments with nuclei continue to contribute to the understanding of basic
interactions. Investigation of nuclear properties and the laws governing the
structure of nuclei is an active and productive area of research, and practical
applications, such as nuclear power, smoke detectors, cardiac pacemakers, and
medical imaging devices, have become common".

That's right - and according to The ABC's of Nuclear Science produced by the Nuclear Science Division of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory the study of nuclear physics contributes to thousands of technologically and socially responsible advancements. Condensed into a handy chart are only some of the broader fields nuclear physics has a hand in.

Here is a direct link to this chart in context.

It seems that nuclear science does a whole lot more than contribute to weapons.

Restricting access to the materials through which a nuclear weapon could be composed is one thing, banning an entire line of scientific inquiry is another. This is the distinction the UN Security Council is apparently on the verge of missing.

Since we can conclude that blocking scientists and scholars of Iranian nationality from studying nuclear physics will not contribute to global security - can someone tell me what exactly the UN Security Council is doing? Are they suffering a form of nuclear neurosis? What they really need is Mel Brooks to scream "We've gotta protect our phoney baloney jobs, gentlemen!"

But I digress...